Follies

With his eyes fixed on the fire, Oliver put out a hand and caught her wrist.

‘Stop jumping about,’ he ordered her. ‘Lie still, here.’ He made space on the rug beside him and obediently Helen lay back with her head against the cushions. His fingers encircled her wrist, and, as if to underline her own image of her body, he murmured, ‘So thin and brittle. One false move and it might snap. Poor Helen. You need feeding up.’ And he laughed again, pleased with the idea.

In the quiet that followed, Helen collected herself. What else did you expect? Or want? You shared those moments of love-making with him, and in those moments he was yours. Nothing can take that away. And now, what point is there in wishing it had happened some other way? Or hadn’t happened at all? You wanted to give yourself to him, because what else could you have offered? And he’s still here beside you. With his fingers around your wrist. Take what you’ve got, and believe in your own convictions.

The threatened tears were gone now, and the determination was back in Helen’s face again.

Oliver sat up and reached for a log from the basket. When he threw it on the fire, the embers glowed hotly and sent out a last fierce blush of heat before settling again.

He let go of her wrist and leaned away from her to fumble in one of his pockets. When he settled himself, Helen saw that he was holding a key ring, with a small, silver propelling pencil dangling among the keys. Quickly, Oliver unscrewed it and Helen saw that it was not a pencil at all, but a hollow tube. Oliver patted his pockets again and then produced a tiny silver-backed mirror. Finally from his wallet he extracted a single, crisp pound-note.

‘I can’t stand the ostentation of people who use fifties,’ he told her. Helen watched, bewildered.

Frowning with concentration now, Oliver shook a tiny drift of white powder from the tube on to the mirror. Then he held it out to her.

‘Snort?’ he asked, casually.

‘What is it?’

‘Cocaine,’ he answered, enunciating the word very carefully. ‘What did you think?’

‘No,’ Helen cried out before she could bite back the word behind her teeth. Suddenly, and with startling vividness, she remembered Frances Page being driven away in an unmarked car by a young and pretty policewoman and a creased middle-aged man who bore no resemblance to the drug-squad officers of television serials.

Oliver shook his head. ‘It’s harmless, you know, unless you’re very stupid. And it is instant sunshine.’ He offered the mirror again, as if it were chocolates.

‘No. Thank you.’

Oliver shook his head again, as if to say please yourself, then rolled the crackling note up into a narrow tube. With a sharp sniff at each nostril the white powder vanished from the mirror.

This time the tempo of their love-making was languid and dreamy. To Helen each movement seemed slower, as if replayed before her eyes by an unseen camera, but yet more piercingly sweet than she could have believed possible. The world beyond the little circle of firelight, beyond this coupling of tanned skin with her own pale translucent flesh, meant nothing.

This was Helen’s first experience of living for the moment, of being absorbed in the sensations of the instant, and she was transfixed by it. At last Oliver drifted into sleep with his head heavy against her breast. For a while Helen stared over the crest of blond hair into the greyness of the dead fire. Then she, too, closed her eyes, as if surrendering herself once again, and then slept with him.

It was very late when the black Jaguar slid alongside the steps leading down to Follies House.

Oliver switched off the engine and glanced sideways at Helen. Her chin was sunk against the collar of his coat which he had wrapped around her, and she seemed to be lost within her own thoughts.

‘Follies,’ he said, to nudge her back into awareness. ‘I told you I’d deliver you back, safe and sound.’

Helen stared at him, her face drained of colour by the orange street lights. Something in her expression made Oliver uneasy.

‘You’re not sorry are you? About today?’ He had meant it lightly, half referring to her missed day’s work, but Helen interpreted it differently.

‘No, not sorry. Stunned, perhaps. And bewildered. But happy too.’ She smiled at him, and her small, cold hand reached out for his as it rested on the gearstick. ‘Are you sorry?’

Her question disconcerted Oliver but he kept the lightness in his voice as he answered. ‘No, why should I be? One only feels sorry if things turn out badly. And this evening wasn’t bad. Not bad at all.’

There was a small silence before Helen spoke again.

‘Will you come back again? Soon?’

‘Of course. I’m always in and out of Follies. Rose likes to see me about the place.’

Helen nodded, accepting that.

Oliver leaned back to gather up her books from where they lay scattered behind the seats. He glanced at them before handing them over.

‘God, serious stuff.’ His voice was teasing. ‘Do you work all the time?’

‘No,’ said Helen in a small voice. ‘I didn’t work today, did I?’

Once again, a little silence hung between them before she took the books from his hands. ‘It’s late,’ she said, as if reminding herself rather than Oliver.

‘Mmm. And Hart has decreed that tomorrow work starts on the play in earnest. Something tells me that he’s likely to be a slavedriver.’

Cheerfully Oliver climbed out of the car and opened Helen’s door. He helped her out and they faced each other in the livid light. As he looked down at Helen’s pale, heart-shaped face framed by black curls, Oliver saw that there was something unfamiliar in the huge eyes that met his. It was something that he didn’t want to confront too closely. Instead he kissed her lightly on the cheek and swung her round to face the steps.

‘Safe home,’ he told her.

‘Goodnight.’ Her fingers touched the cuff of his jacket for a second before she walked away.

Oliver leaned on the parapet to watch her go and noticed again how slight she looked. He remembered how light she had felt in his arms, like a small bird, and how the strength of her passion had seemed at odds with that fragile body.

He frowned and turned abruptly back to his car.

Before he drove away he glanced up at the square dark shape of Follies House. Lights showed at three long windows on the first floor, and Oliver knew that they were the windows of Pansy Warren’s room. The frown disappeared and Oliver was whistling as he eased the Jaguar away towards Christ Church.

Slowly Helen climbed through the dark house to her room. She had wanted, as she said goodnight, to seize hold of Oliver and never let him go. Even as she heard his car purr away she felt cold with the loss of him. But she squared her shoulders and, inside her head, tried to laugh away her feelings. Anyway, she reminded herself, he’ll be back soon. He told you so himself. Perhaps tomorrow. Or if not tomorrow, the next day.

Three

Stephen Spurring folded The Times into three, vertically, as he always did, and propped it against the coffee pot. The dining room was quiet, with thin autumn sunshine reflecting on the amusing pieces of high Victorian furniture collected by Beatrice and himself years ago, but from the kitchen came the confused babble of bickering children’s voices. Beatrice herself could be heard from time to time, refereeing in the state of constant war that seemed to exist among their children.

Stephen stirred his coffee very slowly. This moment of privacy, ‘Daddy must have some peace over breakfast, darling, because he needs to think,’ was a legacy from the early days of their marriage, and he still clung tenaciously to it. It was little enough, Stephen thought. In a very few minutes Beatrice and the children would get into one car to do the round of bus stops and school gates, and he would take the other into Oxford. The day would officially have begun.

In the meantime, there was his oasis of quiet and the newspaper. When he glanced back at it the print blurred obstinately in front of his eyes. Damn. His reading glasses were upstairs, and the thought irked him. Needing glasses at all made him feel old and creaky. Irritably, Stephen abandoned the paper, picked up his cup and went over to look out of the French windows. The gardens around the old stone rectory looked very bright, gaudy with autumn colours. As he stood watching, a grey squirrel bounced jerkily across the grass.

Thirty-nine wasn’t so old, Stephen told himself.

It was October again now. This was the time of year when everything came to life for him after the long silence of the summer, just as it had done for the last twenty years. Twenty? Had he really been in Oxford for that long? Stephen smiled wryly, reflecting that this was the last year before middle age. Well, there was still time. For what? he might have asked himself, but he chose not to.

He was surprised to find himself humming as he picked up his briefcase in the black-and-white tiled hallway. A glance in the ornate gilt hall mirror cheered him further. Stephen had never belonged to the dusty corduroys and down-at-heel shoes school of University teachers. Today he was wearing a soft grey tweed suit, and a bright blue shirt without a tie. He looked sleek, and younger than his age even with the threads of grey in his silky hair. Satisfied, Stephen went on into the kitchen to say goodbye to his wife.

Beatrice looked round at him, tucking the loose strands of dark hair behind her ears as she did so. It was a gesture that she had used ever since he had known her, and it still made her look like a schoolgirl.

‘Goodbye, darling,’ Stephen murmured. ‘Have a good day. I might be a bit late – faculty get-together.’ They kissed, automatically, not meeting each other’s eyes. Stephen reached out to touch his younger son’s shoulder as he passed, but Joe jerked his head away. Sulking about something, Stephen remembered, but couldn’t recall what. Five minutes later he was in his car, ready to drive the numbingly familiar ten miles into Oxford.

Beatrice watched him go, half regretfully. Fifteen years felt like a long, long marriage, but her husband still had the power occasionally to make her catch her breath and wish that he would stay. Even though she knew him much better than he knew himself, and that knowledge left no room for illusions, she still half loved him, half craved for him. Well, she reminded herself, the days of ducking guiltily out of whatever they were supposed to be doing and staying at home alone together were far behind them now. Beatrice reached for the tendrils of hair again, then remembered the marmalade on her fingers from Sebastian’s plate. She wiped them slowly on her apron, staring out of the gateway where Stephen had disappeared. She was still tasting, as she did every day, the odd mixture of frustration at her dependence on him and the satisfaction that, in spite of everything, they were still together.

‘Mum? My gym shirt?’ Eloise’s voice came demanding from the doorway. Gratefully, Beatrice stopped thinking and began to rehearse the daily list: clean football kit, riding lesson after school, three things beginning with J for Sebastian to take with him. Another day.

Stephen was still humming under his breath as he strolled into the packed lecture room. The sight was familiar, but it still touched him. There were the dozens of fresh faces, the clean notebooks and brand new copies of his own Commentaries. The size of the audience was gratifying. Stephen had given not a thought to his lecture, but that didn’t matter. He had delivered this introduction to his pet subject so many times that it was as familiar to him as his own name. He put his unnecessary sheaf of notes down on the desk and smiled around the room.

‘Okay,’ he said softly, as if speaking to just one of the faces turned up to him. ‘I’m going to talk to you today about love. Romantic love, sexual love, real love, as we find it in the greatest of Shakespeare’s great comedies.’

There was a ripple around the room as pens were unscrewed and eager hands began to scribble down Stephen’s words.

Chloe Campbell was the only person who didn’t move.

Instead she cupped her chin in her hands and looked intently back at Stephen. Fortyish, she thought, and not a bit like the stooped academic she had expected from reading the lecture list. This Doctor Spurring was slim, not tall, but undeniably sexy. His hair was just a little too long but it was well shaped. He wasn’t conventionally good-looking but his eyes were a startling clear blue. And his mouth, almost too full and curved, looked as soft as a girl’s. There was something in his voice that attracted her too. Under the conventional, cultivated tones there was something – someone – else. Was Stephen Spurring a Yorkshireman, Chloe wondered, or a Geordie perhaps?

After his forty-five fluent minutes, Stephen began smoothly to wind up his introductory lecture. All around her Chloe saw that there were sheets of notes with underlined headings and numbered points, now being clipped with satisfaction into new folders. Dr Spurring was an excellent teacher, she realised, but she hadn’t written down a single word of his instruction. Stephen Spurring the man interested her far too much.

When Stephen came out of the lecture, hitching his black gown familiarly over his shoulder and thinking cheerfully of coffee and the rest of The Times, he found three people waiting for him. Two of them, he saw, were Oliver Mortimore who was lounging characteristically against the wall to watch the girls streaming past, and an intent-looking Tom Hart from the Playhouse. The third was a girl. Stephen had glimpsed her mass of dark red hair in his lecture audience, and now he took in green eyes, an aura of self-possession and a direct, challenging smile. He had no idea who she was, and wished that he did.

He turned reluctantly to Oliver and Tom.

‘Still no Rosalind?’ he asked, without much interest. Stephen was the senior faculty member responsible for student drama productions, and usually he enjoyed the involvement. He liked the passionate enthusiasms of his undergraduates, and even more he like the steady trickle of pretty would-be actresses that it brought him into contact with. Yet this particular production, Tom Hart’s As You Like It, threatened to be less agreeable. To begin with, casting Oliver Mortimore as Orlando was an absurdity. The boy knew nothing about Shakespeare and seemed to care less. Stephen guessed that he had agreed to act the role simply out of amusement and curiosity. And Oliver was devoted to amusing himself, the older man thought with dislike. He stood for so many of the things that Stephen had despised Oxford for twenty years ago, and mistrusted even now – inherited privilege, too much money, the unquestioning belief that life owed to its brightest and most beautiful the leisure to eat, drink, ride horses and indulge themselves in and out of bed. Stephen, with no such privilege behind him, had little time for Oliver’s kind. Then there was Hart. He irked Stephen too, although the reasons were less clear-cut. His very presence, the suggestion of foreign, Broadway glitter which he brought with him, was a mystery. He was difficult to place, and so just a little threatening. Stephen waited without enthusiasm to hear what the two of them had to say.

Tom didn’t hesitate. He started talking quickly in the confident manner that annoyed Stephen. ‘We’ve got a couple of girls coming to audition for Rosalind at twelve. Can you be there?’

It was a mere courtesy that the senior member was invited to approve of the casting, at least in Tom’s view. Stephen hadn’t wanted Oliver, but that was just too bad.

Stephen frowned and glanced at his watch. The way that Tom Hart always addressed him as an absolute equal didn’t help, either. But he wasn’t going to give up and take a back seat, because that was probably exactly what Hart wanted.

‘If I must,’ he answered. ‘Just don’t keep me hanging about for too long.’

‘Of course not.’ But there was more irony than courtesy in the response. Cocky bastard, Stephen thought, and turned away deliberately to the red-haired girl who was still waiting at his elbow.

‘Dr Spurring,’ she held out her hand. ‘I’m Chloe Campbell. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your lecture. And to ask you a couple of questions.’

Stephen saw that she had the clear, creamy skin of the true redhead, coupled strikingly with dark brows and eyelashes. She also had a wide, curving mouth which seemed made for laughter as well as for other, more intimate things.

‘Ask away,’ Stephen smiled at her. He looked round and saw with pleasure than Tom and Oliver had gone. ‘Or better still, let me buy you a cup of coffee, and then you can ask me.’

With a touch of his hand at her elbow, Stephen turned Chloe round in the direction of the senior common room.

‘In here,’ he murmured.

Chloe found herself sitting in a deep, leather-covered armchair in a sombre, quiet room. There was a log fire at one end, and at the other a long table covered with a white cloth and trays of china and silver. There was a promising smell of fresh coffee.

This is more like it, she thought.

Chloe had already admitted to herself that her first few days in Oxford had been very short on glamour of any kind. She hadn’t come up expecting immediately to dine off gold plate in ancient halls while the greatest minds in the world sparred wittily around her, but neither had she anticipated quite so many anoraks and queues, and so much junk food served and eaten cheerlessly in plastic cafeterias. And Follies House had been lonely, echoingly quiet. She had heard the third lodger, Pansy whoever-it-was, arriving with huge quantities of luggage, but she had left again immediately, apparently for a long weekend. Helen had been there and Chloe would have liked to see her, but she had vanished disconcertingly early every morning with a forbidding pile of books. Chloe’s only chance of companionship had been with fat, chuckling Rose in her witches’ kitchen. Pride was the only thing that kept Chloe from turning tail and running back to London.

But this was different. This peaceful room with its scattered figures in black gowns was more what she had expected. And here was Stephen himself, leaning over to pour coffee, his eyes even bluer at close quarters than they had looked across the lecture room.

‘Cream? Sugar?’ he asked, then handed over a deep cup with, she saw in amused satisfaction, the University crest emblazoned on the side.

‘Well?’ he asked, smiling a lopsided smile that made Chloe shift a little in her chair and forget, for a moment, the bright opening that she had planned.

‘Ummm …’ Now they were both laughing. He’s nice, Chloe thought. Nicer than anyone I’ve met for, oh, a long, long time.

‘Dr Spurring,’ she began, but Stephen leaned across at once and rested his fingertips lightly, just for an instant, on her wrist.

‘Stephen,’ he told her. ‘Even my students call me that.’

‘I am a student,’ she told him, half regretfully. ‘A mature one, as they say. That’s one of the things I wanted to ask you about, as it happens. I’m very new to all this, you see. I haven’t read nearly enough. And I’ve been out of the way of – oh, just thinking properly, for years and years. Will you give me some advice about where to start? Tell me what to read, to begin with. Not just reading lists, but what’s really important. I feel at a disadvantage. And I’m not used to that,’ she finished, candidly. She had intended to make herself sound interesting for Stephen Spurring’s benefit, but she seemed to have blurted out something that was closer to the real truth. I’ve only made myself sound naive, Chloe thought, with irritation.

‘You? Feel at a disadvantage?’ Stephen leaned further back in his chair and grinned at her. ‘Come on … Chloe … look at yourself, and then look at those kids out there.’ He waved in the direction of the window and its view down a flight of steps crowded with people hurrying between classes. ‘Okay, apart from your obvious advantages, and you don’t need me to list those, you’re a little bit older. It can’t be by very much …’ he smiled again, into her eyes this time, ‘but you’ve had the chance to live some real life. Adult life. Which means you know yourself a whole lot better, and you understand people and their funny little motives more clearly. Isn’t that true?’

Chloe nodded slowly. ‘Yes, but …’

‘Listen. What could be more important, particularly in our field, in literature?’

Our field, Chloe thought, suddenly proud. I really am here, talking to this clever man, who’s still got the sexiest mouth I’ve ever seen. Even better, he’s not going to start the bitchy business gossip in five seconds’ time, nor is he going to try to get me to put some work his way. I’m glad I’m here. This is where I want to be.

‘… what matters is what comes from you,’ Stephen was saying. ‘Your own ideas, drawn on your own experience. That’s better than having read and being able to regurgitate every work of criticism on every set text there is. And that’s why you’re lucky. Literature is about people, after all,’ he said softly. ‘Men. Women. Their loves and their tragedies. Yes?’

Yes, Chloe thought. ‘In your lecture you said …’ but Stephen interrupted her.

‘In my lecture, in my lecture. I’m a teacher. I have to put things across in a certain way because that’s what I’m paid to do. But as a human being, as a man, I might think differently. I’m not just a don, although students tend to forget that.’

I won’t tend to, Chloe told herself, I can promise you that.

‘You know,’ Stephen’s eyes travelled over her face, from her eyes to her mouth, ‘I envy you. Having put whatever, whoever it is behind you, to come here, you’re starting afresh. Make sure you enjoy it, won’t you?’

Was he challenging her? They were looking intently at each other as Chloe whispered, ‘Yes, I will,’ and it was a long moment before either of them spoke again. In the end it was Chloe who broke the silence. She reached forward to the silver pots. ‘More coffee?’

Stephen shook himself slightly. For both of them, it was the signal to slow down just a little. Chloe always thought that the anticipation was half the fun, and she didn’t want whatever was going to happen with Stephen Spurring to unfold too quickly. She was delighted to find that Stephen’s understanding matched her perfectly.

‘Thank you. Well,’ he said, in quite a different, polite voice, ‘what does bring you here? Thirst for learning, or something more necessary?’

He was an easy audience, Chloe found. She made the edited version of why she had decided to come to Oxford sound as amusing as she could, and she gave him a quick, vivid sketch of her London advertising life. Stephen laughed with her, admiring her animated face as she talked. The morning’s good humour consolidated itself inside him. At length, he made himself look at his watch.

‘Oh God, I’m due to watch some auditions at twelve. I must go.’

‘With the young Apollo and his business manager?’

Stephen laughed. ‘Exactly. I’d forgotten you were there.’

‘Who are they?’

‘The tall fair one is Lord Oliver Mortimore.’

Chloe saw again the aquiline good looks and the unmistakable hauteur in Oliver’s bearing as he stood back to watch the world go by. Just as if it was there for his benefit alone, she thought, and her heart sank for Helen’s sake. Helen’s eyes had been just too bright when she talked about him, and her bewildered eagerness had been just too obvious. Chloe sighed. A mismatch, she thought, if ever there was one, and the only person likely to be damaged by that was Helen herself. Well, perhaps it would come to nothing anyway.

‘Do you know him, then?’ Stephen was asking.

‘No. It’s just that a friend of mine does. And who was the other, the business manager?’

‘You’re quite close to the truth, as it happens. Tom Hart, son of Greg Hart and heir to just about the entire New York theatre business.’